Welcome everybody to Midday magazine for this Wednesday, July 24th, 2024.
Have your host James J. Mailoff here.
In part two today, we're going to catch up with our friends from the ODC.
We have Lisa and Ashley joining us looking forward to that.
Right now in studio wave, Woodcottny board chairman Lance Plymouth with us.
Lance, good to see you.
James is good to be back.
I've had a couple of people fill in for me admirably over the past couple of shows because they've
had me all over the country, but really glad to be back.
It's always a pleasure.
I appreciate you and your staff setting up the interviews for us to have guests come
in placement of you.
We certainly say a big thank you to our friends at Wisconsin Rapids Community Media.
Appreciate the gang over there too, yourself in favor.
Go to YouTube, type in your search bar at Wisconsin Rapids Community Media and subscribe
to their page.
Keep up to date with the great work they are doing.
Lance, I want to talk a little bit about meetings and voting and committees with you.
First up, Woodcottny has purchased four stool shorts.
There is a plan in place for that.
Can you tell us anything about that?
Yes.
I was laughing.
One of the things I just got back from a national conference, we always talk about transparency
and then we talk about what can be disclosed and what can't be disclosed because of legal
ramifications sometimes.
The long-term plan when we started down that jail project was to obviously provide adequate
parking, especially for those with accessibility issues.
Part of that was to bring parking closer to the front of where the new entrance will
be in the corridor.
Over the course of time, we basically acquired all of those properties that would generally
be considered across the street from the courthouse.
There were a couple offices there and the last piece of that was the four-stools property.
We've been working on that as part of that entire project that you've heard about, you
know, that pick a number of the $90 million with a $10 million contingency.
Part of that project was adding that parking to that.
At some point that will occur, not immediately, it will go along in conjunction with raising
the old jail and some of the plans that still have to be put together, but that was part
of the plan, day one, and now we have acquired all that property across the street, which
will allow us to do that.
Is there more planned in that area?
There's no more acquisition planned in that area.
There's some reconfiguration of some of the parking and some of the other things down
the deck currently exist, but no, there'd be no additional acquisition.
As far as, you know, how are the planning going?
How is the construction going, all the planning for all of this?
Yeah, I can actually answer that accurately.
It's really nice when you have guests in here, people that probably provide a lot more
information in a specific area or a silo than I do.
They're experts.
I probably know more about the entire county operation than virtually anybody from end to
end, but about two inches deep.
We get people in here who know it, you know, two feet deep, and maybe a little bit narrow
or scope, but the reason I brought that up is on the way here I actually was speaking
to the sheriff.
And Sean Becker, our sheriff, we have a great sheriff assured me that we're right on
schedule.
We're on budget with that new jail.
We're anticipating a completion date of around mid-Actober.
I mean, that could go a little earlier, you know, a couple weeks later.
And then occupancy around January, because I have to go through all the certification processes.
That being said, somewhere hopefully mid-Actober, late-Actober, we're going to be able to
run some open house events for the community so they can see what is there.
And those will be controlled, you know, groups that, somewhat what they did at Lincoln High
School if any of you want there, you know, groups of 2025 going through with one of the
law enforcement officers, so you can see that entire operation.
Many law enforcement groups and other special groups have already toured the facility.
I don't know if you've had a chance to do that yet.
No.
We'll get you.
We'll get you.
No, we'll get you in there.
But no, that's right on schedule, right on budget, and part of that entire plan is coming
along great.
Part of that was we really had great weather this winter.
And then when we've had a really wet spring, everything was already under rough, so it really
didn't slow us down.
Got lucky with that.
It was nice and mother nature to work with us on that one.
Yeah, we had a call in and it worked out great.
You know, you mentioned Sheriff Becker and something that Sean and I have talked about
a lot.
One of them actually doing a tour.
We're looking forward to that.
We're going to come down there.
We might even drag Wisconsin rapids community media with us while we do it too.
But one of the things him and I have talked about endlessly, almost our first conversation,
was building more of a bridge and a stronger relationship between law enforcement and our
community.
And with this open house, I think we have an opportunity to even do that even more.
Just people, everyday citizens coming to the jail, more than likely, a lot of citizens
that may not know what a jail looks like or know what our law enforcement goes through
inside that jail.
It's going to give them a little empathy, a little insight into that while also just kind
of it being interesting.
I mean, this is a project that you know better than I do is decades in the making.
You know, and I can't compliment our sheriff and our sheriff's department enough.
And it's really interesting because I just returned, I was sharing this from the National
Association of counties, annual conference, having to be in Tampa, you know, beautiful
place to go in July.
If it wasn't out enough here, you know, let's go to Tampa.
Oh, you brought that.
Yeah.
I was sharing, I said, I actually had flights.
It was kind of funny.
Madison, Chicago, Chicago to Tampa, Tampa, Dallas, Dallas to Denver, Denver to Vail, back
to Denver and for some conferences and every one of my flights was on time.
And then I'm looking at friends that are still stuck somewhere because the Microsoft glitch.
But the point was, you know, we discussed those relationships with law enforcement.
And not every county across the country has a relationship that our board.
And generally our other law enforcement agencies within the county have with our sheriff's
department.
And that's a direct result of Sheriff Becker and his staff.
They do a tremendous job of what I would call community policing.
They get out there.
And when we went out to build the jail, we didn't just say, we're going to build the jail
and Ramitani's throat.
We made numerous appearances throughout the county, engage the whole community, say, what
should we do?
How should we do it?
Sheriff Becker and his department do that with everybody.
And it really came to light, segue here a little bit.
We had the largest watersky tournament in the world here last week.
And not only are our sworn deputies out there that you see regularly, but our reserve deputies
were out there.
And there was an interaction that occurred between two of those reserve deputies and some
people who were sitting in the stands right in front of me.
And they contacted them a couple of times and eventually whatever the issue was resolved.
And when they walked away after that particular show, I was over.
I walked up to that person who was here, a guest of our county.
And I said, can I, if you don't mind me asking, I didn't tell him who I was.
I said, if you don't mind me asking, what were they, what were they up to?
And he said, they asked us a couple of questions.
He goes, we answered, he goes, they couldn't have been more congenial.
They couldn't have been better trained.
He said, I have nothing to do but complement the shares.
I said, well, that's good to hear, because I have to be your county board chairman.
I think he thought I was going to get on the police stuff, but, and I shared that with
the sheriff yesterday.
I said, you know, whether it's those reserve deputies in the parks, those community efforts
that we make getting them out to in the community policing, it's been past exceptional.
I just can't say enough good things about it.
Yeah.
We're a very appreciative and I'll always enjoy the time with him, Sheriff Becker,
be joining us at the beginning of next month, looking forward to that as we always do.
And great to hear about the project on time, everything rolling smoothly when it comes
to that.
And Lance, you know, what I was saying about Sheriff Becker, you and I have a bit of
a passion project as well, we'll get to in a moment about getting more and more people
involved on community boards and some of that.
But you mentioned this conference that took you away from us for a while here and you
had to spend time in Florida, you poor thing.
Actually, I've always wanted to go to Florida.
If you went to Florida, you know, in October, November, December, if it wasn't
had enough here, you should have come to Tampa with it.
I think it sounds like it.
What other things that you discuss or learn from the conference?
Well, what you find at those conferences, there are so many breakout sessions in regard
to things that, you know, it's, it's, it's not ironic if you would expect it, but,
you know, what we find challenging in Wood County is found challenging across every one
of the counties in the country.
And so right now, those issues tend to focus on mental health and human services issues
and to some extent, homelessness, which in and of itself creates a whole bunch of other
issues with law enforcement and how to handle those.
But mental health, that aspect, those are really big right now.
I would guess that the vast majority of sessions probably revolve around that to some extent
on the periphery.
It might be the health involved with, you know, the health departments involved with that
aspect of it, economic development and how does that work when you have, you know, there's
some, there's some cities that are facing some real challenges.
Not necessarily Wisconsin, but you know, go to Portland, you know, used to be just a
jewel.
I love to go to Portland.
If you go to downtown Portland right now, you're stepping over oftentimes, again, I
don't want to get pigeonholed, but a drug addicted homeless person laying in every doorway
of every business downtown, and it gets very, very difficult to attract business and to
have spurny economic development.
And so one of the things we want to make sure doesn't happen in our area or Wisconsin, you
know, for that matter is to deal with those issues ahead of that crisis.
And so a lot of those, those breakout sessions deal with that.
And then the other part of that is election of those officers that serve at a national
level.
You know, I forget 3,300 counties roughly in the United States and you probably had 26,
27, 100 of them represented at that conference.
So it's a huge conference.
It would be nice if we actually sent more people.
I kind of go into the guys of President and the County's Association, the state sends
me, but there's so much to learn and so much to garner.
It's nice when you send a few people to catch some of those.
It's interesting you bring up what's going on with Portland.
This is a subject I know quite a bit about of research homelessness my whole life.
I grew up around homeless people.
It's a very important topic to me.
And part of the reason Portland is in that situation is not working with other states.
California gets an over flux.
They just keep pushing homeless people to another town.
They keep doing that, doing that, doing that.
It ends up in Portland.
Portland keeps doing that.
Washington is dealing with issues.
So you bring up these conferences and how important they are working with other communities,
other cities.
While there is no one size fits all for any one community, I can imagine that it's that
much more vital to share that information when it comes to topics like that that is a
traveling topic.
There is no, you know, ripening this under putting this under the rug or under the bed.
You've got to deal with these situations.
You can't just keep kicking the can as we've learned with our jail and other things.
Yeah, you know, it's how to handle it.
You know, part of the reason some of those cities have those issues to some extent is climate.
I mean, let's face it, if I don't have a dwelling to live in, I might pick somewhere
that's not 20 below zero.
You know, they tend to gravitate to those areas.
And then some of it has just come, you know, there are some laws in some of those states
or policies that have probably exacerbated the problem.
But they're there to learn as well, you know, and how they address that.
And at the same time, minimize the impact to the taxpayer while they're doing that.
I mean, could you literally house every person who's homeless, you know, in New York,
or Chicago in a luxury hotel probably could?
But that doesn't necessarily help the overall economic.
Who doesn't solve the problem?
It doesn't solve the problem.
And it probably makes it worse because, you know, one becomes a burden on the taxpayer,
the other one is the taxpayer who then vacates that area.
And you've seen that, you know, out migration from some of those areas that have had those
problems.
So everybody's there with the common goal is to solve it.
And really, we've had the lesson the whole time you teach a man to fish.
You know, as far as, you know, funding and some of these things, the biggest thing you
can do is try and look at a homeless person as an actual human being, or a person who
is struggling with addiction as a human being, like you would hope to be looked at yourself
and handling them that way and dealing with it that way, you all the sudden are going
to start coming up with more solutions of how to handle it.
And before you know it, you have a future taxpayer that is going to help your economy.
Yeah.
And that's the reason we have things like our drug court, why we're established in our
mental health courts and some veterans courts and things like that.
You know, we know that part of that population, it can be physical, it can be mental challenges,
or any of the myriad of mental health issues.
I mean, we see that.
And I'm, that's certainly a big part of the problem.
But it's also a separate part of the problem from some who just choose, believe it or not.
I mean, there's somewhere we've, we've promised that, hey, we have a bed and we have a place
you can, you know, take care of personal hygiene and do those other things.
Some of them aren't interested, which again, I guess in America you get to make a choice.
Statistically, that's less than 15% of homeless people.
Yeah, but yet, I mean, it's still, when you take a nationwide issue, the numbers become fairly high.
So, you know, so when we go to these conferences, those breakout sessions, typically with more so
than the board chairs like myself who set policy are those health department directors, human services directors,
who really can delve into those issues.
And then they bring that information back to policymakers who you hope are willing to listen,
and then smart enough to adapt those policies.
When you're talking with other people and from other community leaders, from other communities,
other states, how often is it that you guys are finding some likeness, some kinship?
You mentioned that how similar problems here can be similar in other states.
Are you finding, I don't want to say solutions to our issues here from other places.
But, you know, influence or maybe ideas that you can springboard from.
Yeah, the problems are generally identical.
And I always laugh because somebody says, well, we're bigger, or in some case it might be small.
And I said, well, add a couple of zeros or subtract a zero from the number, and we're in the same place you are.
You know, somebody said, you don't understand our budget, as I said, we'll take a couple of zeros off,
and leave ours where it is, and then, you know, make the adjustments mathematically, and we're right where you are.
So the problems are unbelievably similar.
I'm across the entire country.
And then solutions are oftentimes far and few between.
But don't think that people aren't trying every day to address it.
And that's how we come up with it.
We get solutions to keep trying and trying and sharing information, and it's good to hear.
It's very good to hear.
Well, we missed you.
It sounds like you made good use of the time, man.
Well, you know, those are always extremely beneficial conferences.
I always say if we can come back with one idea, you're not going to give you an example.
This has nothing to do with the National Association of Counties, but years ago, our county parks committee went to the Wisconsin County Forest Association annual tour.
And at the time, our county was, you know, maybe driving somewhere a little bit under $100,000 in timber revenues.
And we went to that, those conferences for years, and over time, we realized there might be some better practices.
And so it probably cost us, by the time you rolled in hotels and transportation, it might have cost $1,200, maybe even $2,000 to send.
Those officials at conference, but our timber revenues went from $100,000 to in our best years, we pushed $700,000.
So, you know, I don't know about you at home with your checkbook, but I am willing to give anybody $2,000 in exchange for $5,600, $700,000.
So anytime anybody wants to make that trade, feel free to give me a call, and we'll work on it.
But that's a real result of being there, and actually seeing and talking to those people.
So sometimes there's a little bit of expense on the front end, but you really hope it comes back on the back end in return on investment.
We've experienced that a bit in this town with our water, our splash pads, our water parks, some of those things.
And even the jail in many ways is a return on an investment, as we've talked about endlessly with Sheriff Becker,
whose ears are burning this morning, with the, we're sending, you know, people out of city and having to be charged for that.
And now I'm not having to worry about those things.
There's, there's a lot of like add-ins on this, so that's interesting.
Yeah, when you transport, you know, literally a hundred prisoners on, you know, an average every month for 10 years, you know, at the cost of millions of dollars,
not to mention the, I'll call it the inconvenience, the fact they're getting them into court, getting them out of court.
When we ran those numbers, there was about a $25,000, $25,000, $25 million savings over 25 years by building a new jail.
Now, that sometimes can be hard to explain to people, but when they rolled the numbers, I said, yeah, something you have to do.
Lance, Lance Plymouth joining us, Wood County Board Chairman.
And of course, our friends at Wisconsin Rappets Community Media with us.
Lance, I was looking at the Wood County website. You can do that yourself at WoodCountyWi.gov.
Encouraging to do so. You guys have a land and for information council meeting at NAHAD in this morning. Were you a part of that?
No, I wasn't a part of that. That's another meeting.
In fact, tomorrow, I think I even have to be up in, and I go for a tourism meeting, and then a human service is meeting up in Marsfield later that day.
You'd like to get to all of them if you can, but you know, everything we do kind of ties together, you know.
You mentioned it, whether it be splash pads, the new bike trails, and then, you know, one track systems up at Powers Bluff,
the watersky tournament, we just had, you know, 20,000 plus visitors in town.
Those are all a quite economic development. Not only in the dollars they spend in tourism, but the fact that it's a,
it's your best foot forward. When people come to the community, you see you have that.
Now, when we talk to people who are looking at relocating a business into the area, I think they take for granted the fact that Wisconsin,
generally, has pretty good education and pretty good transportation system, much better than many, many different states.
The question they always ask is recreation, because people are now having their lives revolve around those wants,
and more than they necessarily are some of the other things. You know, it's like, do you have a rock climbing wall?
Do you have a, you know, do you have a splash pad? Do you have a pool? Do you have a rock?
Dogs. Dogs. Do you have a dog park? Do you like dogs? Do you have beaches? Do you have boat launches? Yes.
For the last 10 years, one of the most interesting stats to me are the communities across the whole country that are growing.
The most common theme they all have, dog friendly, every one of them. They're dog friendly, and they have seen an increase in their populations.
It's crazy to think that you wouldn't think of it right away, but I thought that was an interesting thing to have.
Well, you know, as you see, maybe a direct correlation. I've actually never studied this for anybody that's out there listening,
but you know, as you see, a direct correlation in family size, which has been reduced over the decades,
you know, many of those people have opted for a pet in replacement of that child or those two kids,
you know, part of their family. So yeah, so we look at all those things is, you know, how does recreation and lifestyle?
Why shouldn't you say recreation? How does lifestyle fit into who we attract?
And those are the things you believe it or not. That's what they ask about. You know, I had somebody,
I was out in, when I was in Tampa, somebody who was there was from a nearby state and said,
you have the best BMX track in the Midwest. Now, this is funny because I'm aware of the track. I've been out there,
but so I don't remember where they're from. Could have been Indiana Michigan or somewhere near Iowa.
They said, why don't you guys put that under rough and run that 12 months year.
You have every national event and I'm going, I never thought of it. I'm not involved with that.
And obviously there's an economic component to that. That and itself might not be a terrible idea.
No, you know, you see what they do with the don't, the golf domes and some of the other recreate.
Some I never thought of. I would have never thought of it till somebody mentioned it.
Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't have thought of it either. It's not a county facility, but we'll certainly talk about it with the people with jars.
Yeah, I've got a lot of friends that do that. I know how much that has grown in this community because of
that bike track. That is a great idea. And I wouldn't have thought of it either. It's a great point.
And great to hear from our leaders that they're listening. You know, I don't think that we could ever hear that enough.
No pun intended. That it's great to hear, man.
No, you know, and you've heard me talk about it. You know, we love community involvement. We get those ideas from the community.
And that's the one thing though. I occasionally hear some public officials and I've been pretty lucky.
Just get they get raked over the coals because they said the officials doing nothing.
And I'll use an example. It might be solar farms. Local officials make this really clear.
Local officials have zero authority. Nothing to say about where those are placed. Those are public service
commissions, no matter what you put in place, you can do nothing about it. There's other things that are
are very similar in nature where the local public official doesn't get to tell you what we're doing.
I mean, we don't we personally can have a feeling, but no matter what I do at the county board is not going
to affect our immigration policy at the border. Nor is it going to affect our our nuclear capabilities.
So, you know, we try to deal with what we have in Wood County. And sometimes people think, well,
you're not being transparent. You're not telling me. They're being transparent.
They're disclosing everything they can disclose, but you just it's not within your wheelhouse.
And so you get it's amazing when you listen to those sometimes you go, I wish I could do something.
Yeah, right. I can get you. I can sit here and yell that for all night.
Right. We as always, as I mentioned, a passion project. As far as we want to encourage people to
get out there, be a part of their board meetings attend these board meetings. If you can't be there
in person, well, our great friends at Wisconsin Rapids Community Media record these. You can find them
right at their website along with our interviews and plenty of more great coverage. Again, follow
the along with them on YouTube at Wisconsin Rapids Community Media dot com. Support those that support
us and support this community. Much like Mr. Plymouth does. Lance, always good talking with you.
If people have follow-up questions, they want to give you some of those ideas or anything else.
How can they get in touch with you? Well, my information is on the county website. That's probably
the easiest way. If I repeated it, you wouldn't remember it. But if you go to the Wood County website,
you can Google Wood County, Wisconsin. It'll get you to the website. My phone numbers are on there.
My email address is in all the best. And I couldn't have said it better than you just did James.
You know, now that I think about it, we've been doing this for years. And I don't even remember your
number. I sure you would think I would. I hear it all the time. It's pretty easy. Yeah. But you know,
I'm repeating everybody, nobody was nice, but it is there. Woodcountywi.gov is the website
woodcountywi.gov. Thanks again, everybody. Appreciate the time today. We'll be back with more
midday magazine right here at 97.5 FM 13.20 AM WFHR locally grown radio.
